Holocaust and Genocide Studies: May 2013

On April 11, 2013 Professor Aomar Boum presented an overview of his research dealing with the Holocaust in Moroccan official and public discourses. The recording of this presentation is now available for viewing on the CHGS YouTube channel. You can access the video by clicking here.

The lecture was a collaboration between CHGS and the Center for Jewish Studies.

Using archival material and ethnographic interviews, Professor Boum argued that North African and Moroccan perspectives about the Holocaust are part of what he calls the durable structures of acceptance and minimization. Using Bourdieu's habitus, Boum claims that Moroccan debates about the Holocaust have been framed and ossified in a context of social and political pre-dispositions of minimization of the Holocaust generating typological and conflicting scripts. Therefore, when individuals go against the grain and question this habitus, they are perceived as going against the principles of regular continuity that has governed the Arab/Moroccan critique of Israeli policies towards Palestinians.

Eric Harkleroad PhD Candidate in Anthropology to Present at CHGS Workshop

Workshop for Graduate Students and Faculty Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence Studies
Thursday, May 9
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
710 Social Sciences

Eric Harkleroad will present "Warfare and Society: Archaeology's Contribution to the Discussion."

Eric's research focuses on situating warfare within the social sphere to examine its changing place in the daily life of Iron Age people in Southern Britain. His dissertation takes a regional look at how warfare, or the symbolic representations of warfare, is distributed across the landscape at different sites and how this changes through time. The work he is presenting uses a different scale focusing on one site and trying to understand how warfare fits into society at one specific site. Additionally he will address the relevance of Anthropology and Archaeology to the interests of the HGMV workshop.

This the last workshop of the 2012-2013 school year. The workshop will resume in September of 2013. For more information on how you can participate next year please email Alejandro Baer at abaer@umn.edu.

Special thanks to Shannon Golden for facilitating and organizing the workshops this year.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

New Publication of Holocaust Testimony by Minnesota Survivor Translated 70 Years Later by his Daughter

Sky Tinged Red is the chronicle of Isaia Eiger's two years as a prisoner in Auschwitz- Birkenau. Eiger immediately wrote of his experiences in the camp shortly after the war. The book focuses on his experiences and his role in the resistance movement that took place at the camp.

Isaia Eiger passed away in 1960, leaving the manuscript unpublished for his family. Discovered by his daughter Dora Eiger Zaidenweber, it was put aside until the mid 80's when she set out to translate her father's story. After translating the nearly 100 pages of the typed manuscript she was surprised to find that it abruptly ended prior to his liberation. It would be another 20 years before she would find the remainder of the memoir, which was handwritten in Yiddish. The pages were small and the writing detailed and cramped, which made the process of translating the remaining pages incredibly challenging considering Zaidenweber was now legally blind. Determined, she invented a process to translate the pages. Even so, it took a great deal of patience and persistence on her part to finish the memoir that has now been published. The process she underwent to translate her father's words is a true testament to her strength of character.

The book is now available for purchase and more information can be found by clicking here.

For more information about Dora's story please visit her CHGS web page.

Whitney Taylor and Katie Menke Receive Human Rights Awards

The Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies congratulate Whitney Taylor and Katie Menke as the recipients of the 3rd annual human rights awards.

Taylor is the recipient of the Sullivan Ballou award, and Menke received the Inna Meiman Award. These two exemplary students have demonstrated incredible aptitude, commitment, and passion in their service of others throughout their time at the University of Minnesota.

An awards luncheon will take place on Friday, May 3 at 12:00 p.m. 280 Ferguson Hall.

Whitney Taylor is a dedicated and emerging human rights activist and scholar, who exhibits incredible energy and intellect inspiring and mobilizing all of those around her.
Taylor has contributed expertise in editing and assisting various human rights research projects and publications and has conducted some of her own human rights research.
Whitney has also contributed to the promotion of human rights through her travels to South Africa during the summer of 2011, where she worked to empower individuals as a research intern for the Southern African Media and Gender Institute. While in Cape Town, Whitney worked to bring meaningful change and to give a voice to those who might otherwise not have been heard through facilitating empowerment workshops in women's prisons.

As an employee at the Human Rights Program, Whitney has assisted in successfully carrying out countless human rights events, which have served to raise awareness on many different critical human rights issues.

Katie Menke, is a devoted human rights activist and scholar whose summa thesis examines the work of the Salvadorian organization, Pro-Busqueda, which reunites families with children who were kidnapped during the country's civil war. In addition to her academic attention to issues of human rights and social justice, Katie has given freely and extensively of herself to advocating on behalf of human rights, particularly in relation to youth, homelessness and inequality. This past winter, Katie took the initiative to spread information about resources for the homeless in Minneapolis, including a program established by St. Stephen's Outreach. During the fall/winter of 2010-11, Katie volunteered with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), working throughout the Twin Cities specifically on their retail cleaning campaign, which focused on bringing attention the poor working conditions of retail cleaners.

The Inna Meiman Award is given in recognition of the friendship between Inna Meiman, a Soviet era Jewish refusenik who was repeatedly denied a visa to seek medical treatment and Lisa Paul a graduate of the University of Minnesota, who fought tirelessly on her behalf, including a 25-day hunger strike that galvanized a movement for Inna's freedom. The friendship between Paul and Meiman is memorialized in the book, Swimming in the Daylight: An American Student, a Soviet-Jewish Dissident, and the Gift of Hope.
The Sullivan Ballou Award is named after Major Sullivan Ballou, an Army soldier killed at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Ballou became the inspiration for this award because of the heartfelt commitment he expressed in a letter to his wife before the battle. The award carries on Ballou's spirit by honoring a student who acts from the heart and devotes heartfelt energy to those around them.
The celebration is hosted by the Human Rights Program in the Institute for Global Studies and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Holocaust and Genocide Courses Being Offered for Summer and Fall

Registration for University of Minnesota's summer and fall semester is now open with a number of courses that fall within the Center's interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Holocaust and genocide.

Please register for the University of Minnesota Course offerings below at the One Stop Home Page.

For a complete list of potential courses click on the following link: Holocaust and Genocide Courses Offered at the University of Minnesota.pdf

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Friday, May 17, 2013

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Thursday, May 2, 2013